Found at a Nottinghamshire garden centre in late August 2024, this
unidentified Tapinoma species is present in large numbers,
based in a newly renovated greenhouse. Columns of varying-sized workers
workers go off in a number of directions to tend aphids and scale
insects on potted plants in other greenhouses, but also head outside and
cover many metres. There are efforts being made to eradicate these ants.
It was the sheer number of ants in these well-formed columns which
prompted my suspisions that this was something more interesting than
Lasius niger. Behavioural differences led to me taking
numerous specimens, which have been sent off to for identification and
the results of which are still being waited on. There are no
Tapinoma ants native to Nottinghamshire, so this is certainly an
imported species and potentially invasive, which must have arrived here
via plant transportation. |